Nondestructive Evaluation of Nylon/carbon-Fiber Additively Manufactured Components Using Rotational Eddy Current Testing

This work applies high-frequency rotational Eddy Current Testing (ECT) to characterize various material and manufacturing properties of fiber-filled fused filament fabrication (FFF) components. Using the FFF process, multilayer coupons were produced with varying filament feedstock materials, extrusion multipliers, and raster orientation patterns. With extrusion multiplier being used to adjust interlayer void content, these manufacturing variables were investigated given their significant influence on the mechanical performance of FFF samples. A custom 15 MHz transmit-receive (TR) ECT probe demonstrated sufficient sensitivity to visualize the phenomena of the swept variables. Furthermore, the extraction of simple features from the rotational ECT scans produced clustering and trendlines consistent with observations from X-Ray computed tomography (CT). Thus, this novel approach to nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of fiber filled FFF components is effective for detection and characterization of impactful AM material properties.